When it comes to the history of DuPage Valley Conference boys soccer, Wheaton Warrenville South is one of a kind.

When known as Wheaton Central and located in a downtown Wheaton location, the Tigers were the first powerhouse soccer team in the western suburbs with second place state finishes in 1975, 1976 and 1983.

It wasn’t until Naperville Central’s state runner-up finish in 1988 that another DVC team added its name to the Tigers’ dominance of league state soccer success.

So as the Wheaton Warrenville South prepares to exit the DVC next spring (along with Wheaton North, Glenbard North and Lake Park) to join St. Charles East and North, Batavia and Geneva in the new DuKane Conference, a chapter in state soccer history will close.

“Knowing we’re the last to go to Naperville Central and play, or Waubonsie Valley, it’s kind of humbling,” Tigers senior co-captain Will Buxton said. “Obviously we kind of made the DVC through all of our sports teams (including seven state titles in both football and boys volleyball), and now it’s feels kind of different to abandon it.

“Luckily I don’t have to go through that. I’ll always know that I was part of the DVC. Playing against those same teams it definitely creates rivalries and rifts for us, not only playing (crosstown rival) Wheaton North every year but Naperville North, Naperville Central -- I don’t like those guys very much either. But now we get new rivals, new high schools and see how that goes and how that works.”

Wheaton Warrenville South coach Guy Callipari has been witness to the majority of the Tigers’ DVC history. He took as head boys soccer coach 27 years ago.

“I came into the DVC and people took me under their wing,” said Callipari, a Canadian native. “I’m not from the area or the United States, so at first I didn’t understand the dynamic or school tradition.

“I had great people here like (football coaches) John Thorne and Ron Muhitch and (former athletic director) Lenore Wilcox who gave me the time to learn more about this program,” Callipari said. “Then I did some digging in terms of our culture of our soccer program about the who’s who, the Charley Fajkuses and teams that finished second in state on three occasions. Just to get a sense that we can’t go forward if we don’t know where we came from.”

Fajkus was arguably the Tigers’ first superstar, eventually enjoying a long career with the old North American Soccer League’s Chicago Sting professional team that defeated the New York Cosmos for the 1981 league championship -- at the time Chicago’s first title in any sport since the 1963 Bears.

While at Wheaton Central, Fajkus amassed 56 career assists in just 43 matches over his two seasons as a Tiger (1973 and 1974). He also later played on the U.S. national team in 1983 and 1984.

Wheaton Warrenville South’s trio of state finals teams featured individual performances that have held up in the record books. Goalkeeper Kevin Lyons’ 36 saves over three matches in 1976 remains the most ever in an IHSA state tournament at any level.

And in 1983, Scott Shorney’s 29 shots attempted in three games (including 13 in one contest) also holds up 34 years later as untouched by any player at any IHSA level before or since.

And when it comes to the record books, the Tomek family holds a unique spot.

In the days before girls soccer was a sanctioned sport at most schools, Christine Tomek (a 1982 Wheaton Central graduate and current Downers Grove North assistant) is credited with being the first female to score a goal in a boys game in IHSA history.

“She and her sister Anne Marie both played with the boys team,” Callipari said, “and there were two other (girls) who played with the boys team before the girls program was established in ‘87.”

Also a three-year all-state softball player in high school, Christine Tomek went on to play one year of softball at Iowa. She transferred to George Mason where she was an All-American on the school’s 1986 NCAA Division I womens soccer semifinalist (which lost to eventual champion North Carolina in two overtimes).

Players weren’t the only part of the school’s saga in DVC history. The town of Wheaton had three members of the conference from 1975 to 1983 when then Wheaton-Warrenville High School and North and Central competed.

Nine years later in 1992, the old Wheaton-Warrenville building reopened its doors again as Wheaton Warrenville South.

“I started (as coach) in 1991, our last year at Wheaton Central,” Callipari said. “And soccer stayed there (playing games on the old Red Grange Field) until 2003 when they got the turf field here.”

Now redeveloped into a park after a time as Hubble Middle School, the old Wheaton Central campus not only produced great high school soccer history but a Pro Football Hall of Famer (Red Grange) and a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer (Bob Woodward).

Be it great players, barrier-breaking performances or various home fields and campuses, the message of Tigers soccer and DVC pride has resonated.

“I’ve never had a bad experience in the DVC,” Callipari said. “It wasn’t about getting one-up on anybody ever. It was about ‘We’re all on the same playing field; let’s lay it all on the playing field.’

“It was about building the DVC collectively, not ‘Let’s do it for one school. Everybody improve, what can we lay out for the kids, what’s the best thing for kids’ development.’ And everybody bought into it.”

The rapid growth of the Naperville area fueled a new center of power in DVC soccer. But the Tigers routinely remained a key factor in the league title chase, and never wavered as a first class program in every way.

“Speaking to the football program, they had already instilled a collaborative environment with growth, development,” Callipari said. “I tapped into that and made it our own. That wasn’t part of our tradition, but it became part quickly.

“It’s not all about wins and losses -- it never, never will be. You can’t believe that to be entirely how you should rate your development. It’s about experiences.

“It would be unfair with what you have sometimes (in talent) to pose the idea of winning a state championship,” Callipari added, “but it’s more what do we do between Point A and Point B given this much time to enhance (the players’) personal development and the experiences they get so they have growth as a person and as a player. That’s what we’ve focused on the last few years.”

A new conference becomes the new focus next year, invoking a mix of nostalgia and excitement.

“I like the DVC, it’s really challenging,” Wheaton Warrenville South midfielder Marco Barrios said. “It’s kind of sad we’re leaving. But next year we can get the new conference and win it. The future’s looking really good.”

For Callipari, huge changes in the future non-DVC course of Wheaton Warrenville South soccer will maintain one common theme.

“We get all the elementary schools involved,” he said, “so we can build a Tiger Nation feel and have kids even coming in from Burma (where two current Wheaton Warrenville South players emigrated from) feel a part of the community.

“It’s ‘I’ll always be a Tiger, Siempre tigre.’ Regardless of what my past is and where I came from, this is who I know I am and who I’ll remember I was. That’s all I can ask for.”

Exiting the deep and elite DVC for the new DuKane Conference won’t bring a big drop in competition by any means.

“It’s not a weaker conference in terms of soccer,” Callipari said, “because they have a traveling base that’s the largest in the state feeding those four (Kane County school) programs forever.

“We don’t have two guys who play in the same club program, and we maybe have five who play club in our program. They’re multi-sporting or don’t want to spend that much time. When you take that lack of experience, you know where we are. Everything we’re getting we’re battling for, which is OK.”

Excitement is high for the new challenge.

“Maybe going into the other conference will at least initially be a compatibility in terms of numbers,” Callipari said. “We’re really drawing from 1,600 (students), and you have some (schools) with 3,500. I’m OK with that. We’ll find a way to be competitive, and we’ll give our best at the end of the day.”

Callipari’s last thought could apply to his classy program and players, and to the magnificent conference history of the DVC that the Tigers helped to write.

“We’re going to do it with dignity, integrity and sportsmanship win or lose,” he said. “You have to walk out of here with heads held high.

“We’re still growing (as players), and I’m still growing,” Callipari added. “There’s no riding off into the sunset with a white hat. It’s totally revamped, reworked, working harder but enjoying it just as much.”